Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Plugins 101

Lesson 14 of 29

Alien Skin Exposure 5 Test

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Plugins 101

Lesson 14 of 29

Alien Skin Exposure 5 Test

Lesson Info

Alien Skin Exposure 5 Test

So now we're going to go let's go to a different image let's go to um you know a lot of these images you can do so much inside of light room that you're just like why why go somewhere else like this one you know, I've got such a great grain inside of light room that there's no reason to go outside of light room but I will say this there's something about the way light room adds grain versus the way nick adds grain look at the highlights behind her shoulder so the highlights behind her shoulder as you go into the white the grain stops it just stops completely see that on the reason they've done that's because that's the way it wasn't film as you get to pure white no grain right? Okay so that makes total sense there shouldn't be any grain in the white because there's nothing in there right? And so that makes total sense but sometimes for an image it doesn't quite work because it the transition is too hard to the to the to the white so if you run into a circumstance like that it's actuall...

y not a bad idea where and in this case it doesn't matter because it's out it's out here so there's nothing ugly about this grain going on but if you had like say a spot on her head or whatever that was you know had that had that you know shine and all of a sudden there's a blank spot with no grain that becomes a problem so at that point that's when I would go to nick software and I would just go straight to nic software don't need to go you know, to photo shop and retouch that if I like if I was doing this but there was just a spot on her that needed grain because it was going into pure white then I would just simply go into next software if I wanted to keep it color I would go into color effects I wanted to go to black and why I would go into silver effects used the grain because the grain inside of nick transitions into the white much more subtly so you can actually keep grain inside of the white even though there's nothing in the white will transition in there and so so then instead of having grain and then no grain you would have graining transition into very light grain so just a different methodology and the way they treat grain and I actually prefer nick's grain to the grain that's embedded inside of light room but then it's a question of what's it worth because it takes time to take an image to a plug in and back just to get the grain that takes time so and it's fine to take that time but is the time worth the gain that you're going to get in this case no but in the case of someone with like something you know a shine on the forehead absolutely it's worth it's worth the move and you do you pop that grain right into the shine and extend a little bit out or do you green the whole photo grand the whole photo okay thank you yeah and that's the fastest way to do it just pitt grain and safe you don't great okay all right so let's go to um we're going to go to oh I know what I was going to show you hold on I got to go to a different a different wedding I've been shooting a lot of weddings of the grand canyon so I have lots of weddings at the grand canyon we were commenting last night about that the photo on the cliff and I've been to the grand canyon we called it the tricky cliff because it's not really there's a little lower area yeah showed what the guys have a pretty good the guy standing down there then that gives away the it's a little bit of a giveaway I mean it's so so what happens is there's there's a cliff and then right he's standing on a little ledge below that cliff and then this area right here if you were to jump off there you would you would definitely bang yourself up and probably break your leg and if you didn't grab a bush you would roll down and then you would fall off a thousand foot clear. So so but it's it's a little more safe than it looks, but it's still not like you don't want tio offer there, but right here there's actually allege that you can walk along on the back side of this one that's, you know, maybe four feet out and then it and then it starts to drop off, but yeah, there's like a little, you know, there's like a little slope for about thirty feet and then so but if you go to the other side like if so, where I am standing to take this picture nilai step backwards, I'm a gagner wow, I mean, I'm a dead man if I go that way, right? So right along this cliff there's right in front of this right to the side of this that's, not a good place, but right on the front side that's that's you could just break your leg, you know, but right where I am, just go. So when I'm when I'm shooting in a situation like this and I need to get far enough back to get the shot, I don't back up so it's a dead on rule that I look where I'm going, even though there's something going on over there I look where I'm going, I place myself as soon as I'm I'm ready, and I know I'm stable. Then I pull my camera and look and if I want to move, even if it's just to reposition my foot or tow, I put my camera down. I look and then I get position on. Then I look got to because falling off that cliff would be bad for business. Yeah, I'm thinking so, yeah. And there's a likewise on the other side, on this side, on the other side over there, it's it's a pretty sure cliff. So there's, there are places where you will fall straight down. So in fact so this is the alien skin. We're going to alien skin now. So it's called exposure five and this is what we did. So this is the original image. But I want to show you the different progressions because it's really interesting software. So this is the original image over here. And then here different iterations of playing around with this image. And you see that the sun is behind this, this bush here but it it it wasn't like this. So this is actual winds flare that's added by alien skin. But it was added in a place that it looks like it's just part that you would never know that that's not actually the sun coming through there, the sun obviously was in the same general area on dh then in addition to that, so I so I was looking at this, and then I added that so the color effect gets added by alien skin, as does the lens flare. But then I added that so if you toggle back and forth between the two, you've got the color effect, but then I added, kind of a texture to the top of it, and it's, mostly seen right over here in the right hand side, you can see it looks like oxen ization on the print is what it looks like, so there's a little texture that looks like the print has been oxidized, and usually I'm not a big texture fan. I really I'm not. I don't get into all the textures to put on and, you know, I just don't get into it, but when I did that, it made the print. I just I accidentally did it. I was just like clicking on things to learn the software, and I accidentally did that and thought, that is fantastic, and it it's sold me on this print and I and then I then I made both because I was like, I really don't know I'm not a texture guy, and so I really was uncertain about this, and then I started playing with it and I was like, no, I can't between this and this, I cannot not go with the oxidized print there's just something about the way it is presented itself. So occasionally you have those little happy accidents where you find something that you just never would have found, and I would have never gotten there by building it and photo shop either because I would have never thought to start building texture into something so that's, another part of the value of a of a plug in, you know? So I'm going to now go at it in and we're going to go to expose your five click on that that's going to open our image, expose your five they kind of went for the light room feel to they didn't do as good a job but the look and feel as did nick software, but but they really like they were trying very hard to make you feel like you're in light room, you've got the navigator over here, you've got now this's something that I think light room should have and it doesn't and that's an overall intensity of things so you can take and go crazy on things and then grabbed the overall intensity and dial it back, and I have I have a friend who had a professor in college who said, good art is when you cross the line and then pull back a little because if you just crossed the line, you're just shock it's, just shocking on it's, just it's it's in your face, and it may get some attention right now, but in the end it won't stand the test of time. But good are is when people really they find the line because they cross it and then once they've crossed the line, they dial it back, they pull it back a little bit so that it's it can stand the test of time and it doesn't go overboard and so I do that was burning and dodging all the time burning and dodging you burn and dodge, and then you pull it back. That's just what you do if you burn and dodge and leave the burn and dodge exactly as you did it, you probably did it poorly. You gotta pull it back a little bit because it needs to be subtle, so ah, ansel adams said it best, he said the photographers successful to the extent that he can hide his hand. And I think that's a good rule of thumb if you can hide your hand so that people don't know what you did or don't know how you did it, then you've done something good if people know how you did it. Not good. I had a professor in college who was doing photo shop before photoshopped existed. He was he had built a unit that was about the size of, like, a small bedroom, and it had a big glass plates in it, and the glass plates were about the size of maybe a bedroom window and two bedroom windows, you know, like a very large bedroom window and those plates of glass then he could send he could put negatives like big, you know, eight by ten or sixteen by twenty negatives in it, and then he could put objects in it as well, all the way down through the glass. And then he had a camera, and he would shoot at an absolute insane dup the field like pinhole, depth of field through the glass, and he could light each layer independently so that he had shadows going in different directions. And so he you would look at these images, and I was looking at the images in a photo shop mindset because I was just learning photoshopped. One or two in college and I would look at him and thinking how is he doing this in first because photoshopped didn't have layers at the time so it's like I don't understand how he's compositing this info to show he wasn't he was photographing layers of glass wow I mean it was insane really brilliant but you know I don't know why I just told you that story but overall intensity is a really good little slider so when you're in inside of your alien skin you have your presets over here again and you have the ability to to look at the ones that you have created your user one's your favorite ones the color black and white or ones that you've used recently now I haven't ever used alien skin on my laptop so you'll see nothing in here because I want recently used anything I've used it all on my desktop but when I come to say the color ones I can go in and play around with say, polaroid effects and now you're getting into that same mentality of of of both the aliens are the rad labs and the and nic software where they're giving you those options there and so it's just a matter of clicking on one that you think is you know got the right tone ality to it and there you have your options set up okay but notice over here it's very different the difference in exposure versus other things is that you are actually looking at sea how they have panels just like in light room so you're actually created is a light room experience but for a tiff image so you've got a green panel you've got an infrared panel so now as you're clicking on these films and as you're playing around with you know whatever it is you're doing you are creating panels of changed information so if I go to say cross processing and I click on say this one here now the important thing is to go up and watch the changes that occur so here's all the master information for the reds and the yellows and the greens and stuff and if I click on this one they change quite a bit see that so a lot has changed so you're getting at just a general idea and then once you've got something that you you know you can dig you like it you think it looks good then you can come over here and start adding things to it so you can come in and play around with that infrared and you khun notice that just rolling over your presets here you can change and see the changes that are occurring simply you know by kind of moving around so I can do okay I want a lo glow on this so now I've got a low glow on my on my infrared which just kind of helping to soften up everything here on dh then I can come down here and this is where I added my lighting effect on this so you click on light effects once you click on the lighting effects then you have an option to choose what kind of lighting effects you want to use and I and I know I it's limited you know so there's a limited amount but look at that I mean even this one so if you if you took say that and clicked on it the still looks pretty right it it's it looks like the sun is glaring down on my camera it does a really good job and if the son happened to be coming from a different place I can switch it over to that side or I can switch it so it's coming from down below or coming from above so I have the ability to flop the image vertically and horizontally that's being applied there so in my case when I was working on that this image I did a corner flair and I think I did that's really cool I did this one I think and I foot that no didn't say there so it's the corner flares coming from up here and flaring down but it only is really affecting the darker area of this and then I can of course you know zoom into that flare effect and I can change the opacity of that flare effect as well and then when I and this is the point in which I was just screwing around and I hit the dust and scratches and when I did that I started I was like well what's in there okay there's all your dustin oh and here's paper well what's in the paper oh wow so you know and then all of a sudden I'm getting all this you know interesting paper stuff and so I clicked on a paper and then I recognize that it was doing this I thought wow that is really interesting but that's too much so what is good are we dial it back so I took the opacity down quite a bit in order to to make it have that same feel but not quite so intense and that's how we created that image but it really is just the matter of clicking on a preset and then adding a couple things to that pre set and we're good to go and then once you once you have finished up your preset and you think oh well this is really fantastic well then at that point you're going to add your own preset name your preset you're going you can put it in a in a folder you can put it in a new one or you can say I want this to go on an existing folder and you khun uh give it a description and a title and then save that thing so we're going to just call this one um film with flair and I think flares are isn't it horrible? Spine um film with flair and uh oxidized print there something like that and hit ok and now I've got my own cross process right here that I can play with and then I can always start and it becomes my favorite so then it's in the favorites folder as well so then if you go into the colors and say I like this one right here um you can go in to the infrared zx and say I like you know that one so now you've got all these favorites sitting here so you can you know, choose between them but again it's it's adding all of the effects so it's changing this whole panel so unlike light room where you can create a preset that on ly effects this panel or that panel this is changing all the panels but I really like the fact that inside of their software they have created the panels now they just need to up their game in an exposure six they what they should be doing is allowing you to create presets that on lee effect one impanel a time or even better on lee effect one item in a panel at the time so you should be able to make a precept for dustin scratches that adds to the flare effect that you made and it adds to it those types of things so so then they would really upped their game but it's it's it's a great it's in a great spot right now and it does some beautiful stuff and the final quality is just a cz good as all of the other ones out there so it's a it's a it's a very very good uh it's a very good plug in um so anyway and then of course you can export this pre set as well so you just hit export and it's going to send it out to wherever you want and then you can import it into you know your other stuff at home all right ready for a quick question yes I'm ready for any question awesome fantastic uh alan s f asks how faithful are your prints to what you see on the screen with these plug ins excellent great on lee because the screen is calibrated so I use x right to calibrate the screen so I used the display one of that so I won display pro and I just calibrate my screens and you know interestingly enough I used to have all matt screens but then I started buying the new apple screen the I got a new imac and then I started doing things on that instead of using my because my mac pro is getting old and it was slow and they don't sell mac pros anymore at least they didn't for a long time it was like three years now they've got that little one coming out so we'll see but I like my mac I think it works really well but it's got a glossy screen apple stop doing matt screens I don't know why but they did on dh so it's it's not a trustworthy screen but I found that if I if I monkeyed with the first calibrated it and I there's there's several settings on the calibration that if you warm up the count so you can set the different levels of warmth when you're calibrating it and you what you do is you calibrate a little warmer than it normally would be so simulates the warmth of paper and then also you want tio dial down the brightness quite a bit so you're brightness is actually fairly dingy then it then the gloss doesn't improve it enough tow teo teo overcompensate because glossy screens make things really contrast e so then if it looks perfect on your screen you print it looks not contrast enough and so the idea is to dial down that contrast in that brightness so that your your screen looks as dingy his paper and if you do that and calibrate your screen well enough then your prints will look exactly like what you're seeing on the screen so you but you have to calibrate thank you very much and x right helps that yeah yeah doing it by I is not I can do stuff by I but if you come with her one time we didn't have a calibration machine at the school I was teaching at so I was teaching at a local college and uh and there were fifteen computers in the room and all of them were a little off and so I was like, ok, today I'm gonna calibrate all these screens and when you calibrate a screen by I you have to look at the little apple logo and like moving back in fourth and make sure it but in order to do that, you have to blur your eyes so that they're not focused so that you can see the tones and so I would just and after about four I was just I couldn't see it could and I was like, ok, I'm gonna have to do like two of these a day for the next, you know, because I didn't have a calibrate er at the school so don't don't do that don't stand by county one at a time I know from experience that you will go blind yeah, you try and calibrate your screen over and over by I nice okay, so let's apply that and go back to our light room and you'll see now I've got another version of the same image coming back into light room again all of these things are completely manageable through light room through photo shop, so you don't actually, once you get a number of of your favorite presets going inside of inside of a given software, you don't have to go to that plug in anymore. You can automate that process, and we'll talk about automating when we come back after lunch, so you really need to automate as much as possible because what we're doing right now is too much. It takes too much time to go do this kind of stuff. And so number one rule number one, when you go to a plug in, you need to know what you're going there for number two rule number two is you need to go to that plug in and have presets that you can click and be done with him, so we don't want to be just playing around, right? Just click on him and be done with him. And rule number three is, if you if you can get to the point where you have, you know, I go to this plug in for this purpose, or maybe these five purposes you need toe, then automate those five purposes so that you never have to go there again, so really, you shouldn't ever really spend much time in your plug in your plug in should be more of a path. You're you're passing it off to photoshopped photo shops, running it the an action over to the plug in and coming back.

Class Description

Want to know how to tailor Adobe® Photoshop® and Lightroom® to make them even more powerful? Join creativeLIVE instructor Jared Platt for a three-day introduction to the plugins that will change the way you use Adobe’s seminal programs.

Jared will guide you through a wide variety of plugins as he explains why and how to use each one. You’ll learn about building a workflow that incorporates plugins, saving you time and money in the post-production process. Jared will also cover ways to synchronize and implement plugins on multiple computers. You’ll also explore the built-in tools in Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop for creating and implementing your own plugins.

By the end of this course, you’ll be ready to harness the power of plugins and take your image editing skills to new heights.

JBPhotoDesign

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